RePosBand: play as a monster in Angbad 3.2

[Adley]

Remember, Level 1-5 needs to be Clear Hound

So we need to be invisible. Are there any See invisible tags on monsters?

[EpicMan]

TOME 1/2 had player invisibility, and implemented it by making monsters have a chance to figure out where you are each turn, intelligent monsters being more likely to detect you and stupid monsters less likely. If the monster could not detect you, shooting/casting actions would fail, and if the monster moved it would do so in a random direction.

[Derakon]

Which IMO was a pretty annoying way to handle it. Either the monster knew exactly where you were and would hit you perfectly with any ranged attack, or they had no idea whatsoever where you were. The player in contrast practically never tries to use bolt attacks unless they're in a corridor fighting a material invisible enemy, and instead tends to bomb the area with ball spells in the hopes of getting lucky.

In other words, properly-handled player invisibility isn't all that easy to do, AI-wise.

[pampl]

Pos had player invisibility (and the ability to blind monsters!) which puts it on my to-do list, but it's not a top priority.. ATM player clear hounds are just really, really stealthy. I could also give them a fat bonus to AC, but I don't want to spend too much work beyond that on a form that people will only stay in for 10 minutes or so.

Now that I write that I remembered that Dreads and maybe some other Gs are invisible as well, so I should probably move it higher up the list. First I want to do all the breath weapons (for dragons and hounds) then webbing, though. Also now that I found out my flags weren't causing problems, I'm going to try to do them again - immunity to poison for hydras and maybe spiders, super regen for hydras and trolls, pass_wall for Xs and ghosts

[pampl]

I've added the requested races.. got 99 races now, 23 starting races (that's counting the ten original demihuman races). Now I'm working on breath weapons and I need to figure out how much damage different elements should do. I'm going to roughly follow the numbers from monsters' damage caps:
4 basic elements - 6x player level damage
poison - 4x player level
nether, sound, chaos, disen, shards - 3.5x player lvl
light, dark, nexus - 3x player lvl
time, inertia, gravity, plasma, force, mana - 2.5x player levl

I'm thinking about making nether stronger, though, because it's so commonly resisted and the side effects don't work on monsters, and making sound weaker because stunning is so powerful. Do the side effects of inertia and gravity work on monsters? Should mana be made stronger because it blows up all loot? Maybe I should make a 5x player level category and spread the elements out more.

edit: also, because king monsters got the second most votes, and because I looked at how they work and it looks simple to implement, I'm gonna add them next. They'll be done in the version after next, knock on wood.

edit2: breathing bolts will use the same rankings as above and just multiply the damage by 2/3 (and the cost by 1/3..)

[Derakon]

From a quick reading of the source, I don't think gravity or inertia will slow down monsters (compare ToME 2, where they did, and there was no cap on how much slower they got; chained inertia attacks could put even the fastest monster at the equivalent of -40 speed). They're also only resisted by the monsters that breathe them. Gravity does teleport monsters though.

[Arjen]

Thanks for pointing out the fact that posband is back online! So i went to search for it, but i could only find the .5.2 version and not the 5.4. I could only find a page with the source? on it. At least i think it was the source...

[pampl]

From a quick reading of the source, I don't think gravity or inertia will slow down monsters (compare ToME 2, where they did, and there was no cap on how much slower they got; chained inertia attacks could put even the fastest monster at the equivalent of -40 speed). They're also only resisted by the monsters that breathe them. Gravity does teleport monsters though.

Ah, OK, then they don't need to be made weaker to compensate. I'm not sure whether gravity's phase door or nexus's pd/tele should be counted as positive or negative side effects - they make it take longer but generally safer to kill something. Here's my revised table:
Commonly resisted, damage loot, no side effects - 4 base elements - 6x plvl damage
Commonly resisted, don't damage loot, no side effects - poison, nether, dark(?) - 5x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, annoying side effects - chaos, nexus - 4x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, no side effects, damage loot - mana, shards, plasma(?) - 3.5x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, no side effects, no loot damage - dark(?), light, time, inertia - 3x plvl
Uncommonly resisted, powerful side effects, damage loot - sound, force, gravity, plasma (?) - 2.5x plvl
I'm assuming plasma, force and gravity stun monsters.

Thanks for pointing out the fact that posband is back online! So i went to search for it, but i could only find the .5.2 version and not the 5.4. I could only find a page with the source? on it. At least i think it was the source...

I can't quite claim that Pos is back online.. there are still big features in Pos that aren't in RePos, though that'll change over the course of January. ATM it's more of a companion to Pos, for when you can't live without all the niceties of the latest versions of Angband and are playing one of the races Repos supports.

Here's .5.3. 0.5.4 is set to come out tomorrow, and will include plenty of new races as well as some new minor features like ?Acq being changed so it won't drop EQ you can't wear.

[pampl]

Here's 0.5.4:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ctd8s2lugza34yb/reposband%200.5.4.zip

New feature: ?Acquirement and ?*Acquirement* won't drop equipment that your species can't use. They can still drop useless spellbooks, of course.

New races:

Crystal drakes: these guys breath shards and at level 25 can choose between becoming law drakes or great crystal drakes. The latter are initially stronger but law drakes eventually become great wyrms of law then great wyrms of balance and so have an easier end game.

Lost souls: all ghosts have the ability to pass through walls and eventually gain the ability to scare monsters, to blink and teleport, and to shoot nether bolts. They have normal slots and evolve every 5 levels, becoming more and more in-tune with the Negative Energy Plane until they turn into Dreads and eventually Dreadlords. They start out better at spell casting but become ferocious melee fighters.

Liches: you all know these guys. Their most annoying abilities -summoning, stat and charge draining - sadly don't work for player liches, but players do get a nice variety of utility spells with them. They basically play like spellcasters who start with decent melee ability and get no detection. When they evolve into their ultimate form (at level 45) they become completely incorporeal and gain the ability to travel through walls like a ghost.

Zephyr hounds: I ended up doing tiered progression with hounds. Every seven levels you select a new form from a list of 2-5, gaining all the resistances from the tier you were previously in. In the last tier you choose between access to all the breath weapons (the Aether hound) or being able to walk through walls (the Ethereal hound.. don't blame me for the names). All hounds can cheaply detect monsters and breath their own element as a bolt or a ball. A few hounds can breath associated elements - fire hounds can breath light, earth hounds can breath acid - at a higher cost. I'm not 100% attached to the way I've implemented these guys, so be free with feedback.

Angels: these work the same way the Ainur did in Pos but without the terrain modifying spells. Super munchkin-y priest warriors, in RePos their innate melee is a little less insane and their king monster will eventually be Gabriel, not Sauron.

Spiders: A WIP. They can't spit webs yet, but they do have 8 legs each of which can wear a shoe and a ring. They also have very, very few HP and some innate speed. At level 25 they choose between becoming phase spiders or araneas.

Umber Hulks: Also a WIP. They can wear normal equipment (except their claws are too big for gloves), pass through walls, and tunnel extremely quickly. Umber hulks lose their innate confusion gaze when they evolve, but they gain 2 extra arms which means two extra shields (eventually it will mean one extra shield and one extra weapon)

TODO:
*still have to fix the last few slots of a high-level hydra's EQ screen
*need to add code to allow "repeat command" to be used with racial powers
*need to change item wielding so it doesn't unnecessarily prompt you to select a slot when there's only one valid slot.. the code for this is already in there, it just doesn't work for some reason
*need to add more racial flags.. immunity to poison and super regeneration especially

[Sirridan]

BUG: Hitting n to repeat a monster power does NOT drain mana. Playing hound, became a dark hound, and the darkness bolt/beam can be spammed forever hitting n.

Sides that, it's great, awesome job!

EDIT: What's the github again so I can keep current?

[pampl]

BUG: Hitting n to repeat a monster power does NOT drain mana. Playing hound, became a dark hound, and the darkness bolt/beam can be spammed forever hitting n.

Sides that, it's great, awesome job!

EDIT: What's the github again so I can keep current?

Thanks That's a weird bug with the repeat command key - I can't get it to repeat monster powers at all. Hopefully fixing my problem will also fix them not costing anything.

Github's at https://github.com/simongre/RePosBand.

[Sirridan]

Actually, I was wrong. using N for monster powers just makes you move... I'll investigate source for that.

So far awesome fun. Hounds are a blast, Angels too, but a bit hard at first. Can you change cure serious wounds to heal a % of hp like the spells / potions?

EDIT: Lost souls are fun, but a bit overpowered in the sense that you can melee anything while you are in a wall, and they cannot attack back. The other way around is the opposite, the player can melee attack any monster in a wall, if they are adjacent to the player.

The code about it is in melee2.c in the monster directory, still not 100% on how to fix it though.

[Sirridan]

Here's a fix to this issue of being untouchable in walls adjacent to open floor:

in src/monster/melee2.c, function process_monster

                /* Floor is open? */
                if (cave_floor_bold(ny, nx) || (ny == p_ptr->py && nx == p_ptr->px))
                {
                        /* Hack! if ny == py and nx == px then try to "move" */
                        /* This allows monsters to attack passwall players */
                        /* Go ahead and move */
                        do_move = TRUE;
                }

This tells the monster to try to move into the wall if the player is there, which will cause the monster to attack the player. This could cause a problem maybe, if a non-attacking monster that CAN move tries, then it may occupy the same square as the player?

But its a quick hack and it works. So yay

[pampl]

Awesome! I added that to a fix that makes CLW et al. work and display the same as they do in other places, and a hack fix for a bug that lets stuff be equipped in any slot, and uploaded it as version .5.4.1.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9j2qawjm3dkqzim/reposband%200.5.4.1.zip

Oh, and an acquirement change is fixed now: it creates an item based on the max depth you've reached, and displays the item as being created on your current floor, instead of vice versa.

[Sirridan]

Awesome! I added that to a fix that makes CLW et al. work and display the same as they do in other places, and a hack fix for a bug that lets stuff be equipped in any slot, and uploaded it as version .5.4.1.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9j2qawjm3dkqzim/reposband%200.5.4.1.zip

Oh, and an acquirement change is fixed now: it creates an item based on the max depth you've reached, and displays the item as being created on your current floor, instead of vice versa.

Neat, the wall change sadly makes lost souls *much* harder in the early game, thank goodness for !oil